Does Jesus Answer the Lawyer’s Question?

No! Most commentators miss this critical dimension of the all-too familiar story of the Good Samaritan.

Luke 10:29-37

Image by falco from Pixabay

The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” What lies behind this question? The lawyer already knows what the Great Commandment requires, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Surely this cannot mean we have to love everybody, right? That would be asking too much.

The lawyer wants Jesus to tell him how to draw some boundaries. This person over here is your neighbor, but this person over here is not. Before we jump all over the lawyer, let’s be honest. The world’s population is around eight billion right now. Jesus cannot possibly expect us to love all of them, at least if that means saving them all from injury and death, as the Good Samaritan did.  It is not possible.

Jesus chooses to ignore the question of precisely who is and is not my neighbor. Notice that he does not ask the lawyer, “Is the Samaritan your neighbor?” Nor does he ask, “Was the man left half dead by the robbers your neighbor?”

Instead, he answers a subtly different question. What must we do to be a neighbor? He does this by asking the lawyer at the punch line end of the parable, “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”

Jesus’ answer, hidden in his question, raises many more questions than it answers. Because the Samaritan went all out for this half-dead Jewish enemy–does this mean we must do the same to be a true neighbor? He may have been risking his life by his compassion: those robbers might still be lurking about looking for more victims. There were no state troopers, no cell phones!

He put the victim on his own beast, so now the Samaritan must walk. He nursed the man’s wounds. He was generous as well: he gave the innkeeper a blank check to care for the injured man until he returned.

Is Jesus telling us we must always do all of this for everyone? I think this moralistic interpretation is how the story is often read, but I disagree. If we must do this always for everyone it is too easy to dismiss as a hopelessly unrealistic commandment. We will be tempted to throw up our hands and do nothing at all. Moreover, a moralistic vision bleeds too easily into being judgmental, and Jesus warns us against this.

Two Hidden Challenges

I see at least two quite different hidden messages in this story. The Samaritan is described as being on a “journey,” in verse 33. The Christian life was originally called, “the way,” and has been likened to a journey or a pilgrimage ever since. We are exiles here. Our true home is with God whom we hope to be with when we die.

As we follow Jesus on our journey through life, we will see people who are hurting, either physically or spiritually. How do we respond when we encounter these people? The parable challenges us to let the Spirit move us to spontaneous acts of compassion whenever in the natural course of our journey we encounter people in need. This is one of the main points of the story, I think.

The Samaritan did not go out looking for this poor man. Jesus is not telling us we must go out looking for people in trouble. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus often warns us to “keep watch.” Here are a few examples you can check out: Mt 24:42-3; 25:13; 26:38-41. Mark 13:34-37.

I believe Jesus is telling us that as we go about our business, we should always be on the lookout for people who need us spontaneously to interrupt our business and put their needs first. Our Good Samaritan may have passed by such injured people before without stopping, just as the priest and Levite did. I can tell you I have myself passed by homeless people begging for food on the streets of Washington, DC. I could slowly feel my humanity dripping away.

Meditating on this story and others in the gospels eventually forced me to get to know some of these people, to feed them, and work with others to change the system that creates homelessness. Doing so has been crucial for me. Yet, I still sometimes pass by panhandlers. It is impossible not to if you live in the capital of the richest nation on earth! Although I am arguing against a purely moralistic interpretation of this parable, I suspect that like many others, I cannot pass by anyone in need without a ping of guilt on my conscience. I am not sure about this point, but I believe the Good Samaritan parable is not demanding we live without boundaries, but rather that we should be on the lookout for times when we need to let go of them for a while.

The second hidden message of this parable is also in Jesus’ final question to the lawyer: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” We moralize the story by lauding the Good Samaritan who helped his enemy. Of course we should not let old hostilities block us from responding to human need. But Jesus’ question is from the point of view of the man who fell among the robbers–not the Good Samaritan.

Jesus’ message is not about morality, but about our imagination. The arrival of the Kingdom of God means your enemy may prove to be your neighbor, even your savior. Because of his desperate need, this Jewish man will never look at Samaritans the same.

Jesus tells us we are to love our enemies. How the heck are we supposed to do that? This parable gives us a clue. If we have the same imagination as Jesus, we can re-imagine our “enemies” as the very ones who will save us.